Classic City Vibes
Classic City Vibes Podcast - Conversations with people in the Athens, Oconee and surrounding communities who help make this such an amazing place to live. Learn what is going on in one of the nation’s most famous music, film and art scenes, learn about some of the amazing opportunities around us where you can be active and interact with others who have similar interests. This podcast is put out by the Athens Regional Library System where we are committed to helping build strong communities and celebrating our diversity. Engaging Communities, Exceeding Expectations.
Subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
++++
If you enjoy the podcast please make sure to give us a rating or review on itunes.
Classic City Vibes
Gerald Maa: Poet, Editor and Translator
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
This week we are joined by poet, editor and translator Gerald Maa. Gerald talks about his origins and rise in the literary world and about his current role as editor of The Georgia Review. Enjoyed this conversation? Follow, subscribe, and leave a review to help others find the show.
Gerald Maa began as editor and director of the Georgia Review in 2019. Since then, the Review has won, among other things, the National Magazine Awards (fiction and profile writing), the Pulitzer Prize, the Caine Prize, and the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize, reserved for debut publications. In 2010, he founded the arts anti-profit the Asian American Literary Review with Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, where he served as editor-in-chief until he joined the Georgia Review.
His poetry and translation have appeared in places like Poetry, Raritan, and Push Open the Window: Contemporary Poetry from China. His essays have appeared in places like Criticism, A Sense of Regard: Essays on Poetry and Race, and The Routledge Companion for Ecopoetics. His work has been supported by places like the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Library of Congress Asian Reading Room, and the Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine.
All right. Welcome to the podcast today. My name is James, and we have with us today Gerald Ma, who is a poet, translator, and current editor-in-chief at the Georgia Review. Thanks for coming in today. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So let's start with your literate love of literature. When did that first what's your first memory of that?
SPEAKER_00:Oh I actually don't have to go as far as most people in my undergraduate years.
SPEAKER_01:I wasn't I was actually on this like Zoom call with, you know, six writers and one person's like, oh, we can all assume here that you know everybody read them when they were young. And I was just like, I didn't do it. I'm waving my hand saying no. In the back of my mind, I was like, not me.
SPEAKER_03:So what were you into when you were young then?
SPEAKER_01:What was Yeah, I mean, I you know, when I popped out of my mom's womb, it was just like calculator in one hand and protractor in another. I was like I was growing up. Oh yeah. I mean, it's a very kind of tried and true kind of Asian American of a certain generation thing. And I was like groomed to be um, you know, engineer, maths-oriented person. And did you enjoy it though? Was that something you were passionate about, or is it? You know, so what happened was I was an an engineering major in in undergrad. And then at some time like after my sophomore year, um, there were a lot of things going into it, and I was just like, I don't want to do this, you know. And and did I like it? I was having this conversation with um like this um Chris Kong, who is um Korean American writer who teaches now. Oh, he teaches somewhere in Ohio. It's slipping my mind right now. He's great. He's a great writer. We went to grad school together. We were talking about this, and he was telling me he was such a hardcore, so we were both groomed to be, you know, science people, and he was such a hardcore um worker that he actually scared his parents with his marketing. Can you believe that? Scared me Korean, even Korean immigrant parents with how like his Korean immigrant parents were like, I think you need to work a little less. I that was like that possibility was not available to me before he said this. And you know, one of the things that he said was just like, he's like, did I like it? He's just like, I knew I could do it, and I could do it really easily and do it really well. And I liked that, but I didn't like what I was working on, you know, and it didn't occur to me to actually think about what I was working on. So he he has much more clarity about it than I did, um, than I do. But I don't know. I had a falling out with English, I had a falling out with engineering uh sophomore year, and then I was kind of like, you know, going around like flailing to do to do what's next in the year. The year after I decided I wouldn't be an engineering major, I was like lying to my mom, lying, avoiding, and fighting with my mom about my major. And, you know, it was a confluence of like virtuous and unvirtuous things. And so, you know, I had this great teacher in British Litz Survey who presented Virginia Wolf to me and the perfect way for it to just like kind of, you know, take me and arrest me in the way that Virginia Wolf can. And it was, you know, it was just how I met that, and in part due to, you know, Professor Browning. But there were other kind of reasons, like, you know, like I looked around and I was just like, oh man, all the cool people are around here, you know. And you know, the pheromones got in the way also. I kind of like chased, you know, you know, cool, hot people from this class to that class, and and then you know, the English major was not very onerous. Um, and then I took, you know, I took a creative writing class and I had the thrill of like as a 19-year-old who was raised in uh, you know, I don't know. I just like, oh, I have feelings, and it made me feel like a god to be able to acknowledge that and share them and write. Yeah, and so it was a confluence of all those things, and and part of it was just like it was an easy major to get. I wanted to take the next class. Yeah. So, you know.
SPEAKER_03:But did you just start reading a lot after Virginia Wolf? Did did did reading become more of a habit?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I was a good student, so I would read the books, you know. Oh gotcha, exactly. So that was part of it. And then I was a reader, and um one of my my first um poetry teacher, Gary Hawkins, he's up in Hampshire right now. Um, and actually his teacher, Edward Hirsch, came to um um campus to read, and I was like, Oh, I don't know if you know, but you know, one of your students, and he, you know, Ed Ed was just like, I love Gary. You're basically my grandson and all that. But you know, Gary Hawkins taught poetry as um, you know, a reader, you know, and Edward Hirsch once came to one of my MFA classes and said, a writer is nothing but a reader that overflows. And and Gary indulged my feelings, but also kind of established the good and kind of sustainable practice of like, you know, you're a poet because you love to read first, kind of thing. And so it was it was a bunch of that, you know, it's just like I wanted to read the next thing. I was a good student, I read everything, you know, um not always well. Um I came to the English language quite late, so I've never felt like I've been kind of um especially um gifted in the English language, frankly. Um, and and it just kind of grew and grew. And I just I was just always read, you know. After that, you know, out of diligence, not out, you know. And then I found my inspiration. And so it was it was all of the above.
SPEAKER_03:You remember some of those first points? Like, do you still have them? Or you would hide them.
SPEAKER_01:I you know, I I I I I have a terrible memory, so I'll say that. Um it was product, I don't know, I don't know how much of it is genetic, probably not much, but you know, some of it's like I you know, I played football and so the concussions, you know, and then you know products of you know the household I was raised in and all that stuff. But so I don't have a good memory, and yet I still remember some of them.
SPEAKER_03:Finally, yeah, well, you know, you know, and uh they're they are what they are, and um did you not write, you know, a lot of high schoolers and stuff will write a poem or something, and you never even thought crossed your mind.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I I'm quite convinced and it that I did not read a piece of literature as extracurricular anything before I became an English major. Wow. I was really it was really that late that I got that I came to literature. But it is you know, it's the core of who I am now, you know. I'm you know edging up to 50 and so you know, but I I came to quite late.
SPEAKER_03:You know making the transition from writing poems to like sending them off. When did you do you remember when you first kind of started trying to get your work out into the world other than just the classroom?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um well so I I got my bachelor's in 2003. It bounced around a little bit. Um I um right after I graduated, I moved to New York in 2004. My partner at the time was finishing up um her um bachelor's. And then we went to China. She got this really great, she got she got this really great grant, and I was a kept man in China for a year, and it was a great year. Um and then I went to um the University of Maryland to get my PA uh to get my MFA in 2005-2008. And that's part of that's part of like it is a really great program, and I'm thankful for it continually, and I'm still learning what I've learned from it, and I continue to learn from it. Um and that program does such a good job of um instilling um by environment, not not like by declaration, but instilling um practices as literary citizens. And so get you know sending out your work is just part of part of that. They care they care that their you know students succeed, and so you get official and unofficial kind of proddings and coachings to just send that stuff out there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Do you think your kind of background in non-poetry, not you know, kind of mathematical influences your poetry at all? Do you think it gives it a kind of unique perspective or shape or anything? Or you think they were just like a clean cut? They have nothing to do with each other.
SPEAKER_01:Um I mean, I I've had I'm a formalist by inclination. To me, the science and um literature thing is an act of like sheer apostasy, like like sheer and absolute rejection, in the same way that like you know, when I graduated high school, I was a jock all the way up there. Um and then I rejected it. And it was like absolute rejection. You know, I started like wearing hemp stuff and was a vegetarian and all this. And so like the uh if you want to psycho psychoanalyze me, drop James a line. I'm willing to look at whatever you want to say about this. Um, but um my yeah, you know, high school through maybe my mid-twenties was just like a series of just like burnt, you know, complete reinvention. Um of course we're all fallible humans, and so like who's to say, you know, you cannot be absolute about anything and there are errors and all that. And so, you know, um I've never thought deeply about the ways that that impacted my writing. Um but I think one thing is I I am a formalist, so I like to count and I like designs and stuff like that. I don't know to what extent.
SPEAKER_03:Maybe they're connected, maybe not.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um and I think uh uh the science thing meshes so well, especially within Asian American, second generation people of a certain you know, time period, you know, the model minority, you know, much more so than it's still there now, but it was so monolithic when I was growing up of hard work, you know. And so like um my friend Brandon Som and I, um he's a big terrible, terribly gifted, you know, poet. And we published his book with the George R. Books, you can buy the book through our website. Um it won the Pelitzer Prize. Um but um he's just a workhorse, you know, and I'm a workhorse. And I just think so. Some so I think some of it is also just like being like, you know, work first, inspiration later, you know, it's like um that kind of immigrant work ethos, coming to the language late, never feeling like you've been gifted, you know, never feeling like the gift of being eloquent in English, you know, that kind of heritage speaker thing of like, um, I've always had to work to make the language I speak make sense. Yeah. It never feels like some kind of um sibilin or orphic passage where I just like like you know, look up into my eyes and let language course through me. Language has never coursed through me. You know, it's always taken a lot of work, honestly. So that that's what I that's where I would start, I think.
SPEAKER_03:When did you first do translations?
SPEAKER_01:Um that was uh in my MFA program. Yeah, I was I hit I hit a writer's block um in my second and a half, third year. Sat down in an office hour with my dear mentor, the late Stan Plumley. And um I was just like, you know, bemoaning myself and he would always he would always he would he would keep the lights off. He had these just just just majestic bushy eyebrows and and he would sit with his head down and you would never know if he was asleep or not during office hours.
SPEAKER_03:It's a good strategy.
SPEAKER_01:I like I I took uh yeah, I I don't have any overhead lights. I unwittingly become the people that you know have raised me. Um but I don't have I I I don't like overhead lights either. But so I was like, it was one of those where I was just like raking my you know chest and I was just like, I can't write, I'm not gonna finish, I'm a failure, da da da. And like I d didn't know if he um was asleep or not. And he looked up and he was just like, he looked at me, he's like, Well you translate, don't you? And Stan Stan's an elder Anglo male, you know, and so you know, my knee-jerk reaction is like, oh man, like it's like just because I'm Chinese doesn't mean that I translate. And I was like, no, and I hadn't up to that point. I was like, no. And he's like, well, maybe you should give it a try, you know. It's it's a good way to just like keep writing when you don't have anything to write about. And I was just like, oh, you know, left with, you know, didn't slam the door because I'm a good son, but I wanted to.
SPEAKER_03:But you wanted to, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And then I went home, I was like, I'm gonna show him, and I started translating, and I was like, this is and then like I wouldn't admit it, it took time to like admit it even to myself. But yeah, after doing that as a practice, I was just like, this is great, you know. And so that was a strong practice for a fair amount of time. Um what'd you first translate? I'm just curious. Yeah, you know, um, I've translated exclusively this um Chinese poet Heizu. Um it was, you know, um it was someone I found when I lived in China um with um my partner at that time. Um and he's a young canonical writer, he's um brilliant in a lot of ways, very important um in literary history, not very known um in our world. So I was interested in him in part because it showed the gaps in like an Anglo sphere understanding of you know literature and that thing. Um and I translated him a lot and and then I had to and I but then I put it away because I went and got a PhD in literature, and um maybe two years ago I was cleaning out um uh a laptop that should have died ten years ago. I just found it and I was like, oh why is this thing still work? And and I found all the translations that um I had worked on um back then, and so I I I found them and I looked at them and and so now they're still sitting there and I'm probably gonna go back and revisit them a little bit, even though I feel like my translator era is in all intents and purposes maybe over in a lot of ways. Um but I might I might revisit that project and I am kind of picking around at it a little bit right now.
SPEAKER_03:How is translating different from writing? Obviously, they're very different.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, they're different, but uh is there some similarities and some I mean Yeah, yeah, I think um I I I value translation like it was very kind of instrumental in my MFA, you know, um education. And then right after the MFA education, when I was doing a lot of translating, it was something that I kind of I was a card-carrying translator in a lot of ways. I had like great mentors who taught me a lot by kind of by example and by writing, like you know, Arthur Zee is um, he's the he's a poet laureate right now, but he was, you know, my one of my mentors put me in touch with him, and he just he's just a lovely person. He's taught me a lot, and and just being around translators is really important to me. Um and and then when I came to the Georgia Review, one of the things that I want that I kind of stumped on was like, I've always been into translation, I want to bring translation to the Georgia Review. And so like I've been heavily invested in tr in participating in the translation world as an editor too, and so like help, you know, um dipping into the Ulta, which is the um the literary translator flagship conference. Um on paper, I've said it's the rattest conference out there, and I believe it. Um, and I still believe it, and I'm still sincere about it. Um I think um so it's a mode of writing. I think so. There are a couple things, right? I think um the translator Elliott Weinberger has this great line. He's like, translating is the best way to learn about writing poetry, is kind of what he's talking about, because you know, you could work on writing poetry without the onus of expression. So translate translation's the way to work on linguistic, you know, um communication with highly charged aesthetic um component to it without having to communicate something from oneself, right? And so I think there um I think that's an interesting, that's that's what's interesting about that's one thing that's very interesting about translation as a type of creativity. Um and there's also um there's this book that I'm I'm on and off again with um by this um French thinker Jacques Rancière has this book called The Ignorant Schoolmaster, and it's basically it's a theory book that's partially an intellectual um biography of this 19th century um radical pedagogy. Um but so this 19th-century teacher had this room full of working class folks, and he was just like, they all picked some random language. It wasn't so random, but he picked the teacher picked a language that none of them knew and translated the text together. So it was just like all these people, the text, and they all kind of worked with the dictionary together. And so, like, so like Roncier's take on this is that um the ignorant schoolmaster, the best way to kind of decentralize some sort of like hierarchy of knowledge is through translation, because translation is a mode in which not one person can be the utter keeper of all knowledge, right? Even even if you kind of uh take on translation as a mode of mastery, you're still beholden to the original text, you know. And so he's like translation is supreme, is a supreme way to decentralize um any sorts of supreme knowledge, you know. And I think that's like I think that's right. You know, I think there are other ways, there are other means to do that, you know, and I think yes, it's most baked into translation, but there are, but that can be kind of replicated or done even differently in different places. So um I think those are the two things, you know, like what does it mean to communicate without having to think about something that I'm expressing subjectively? I think that's really interesting, um, especially um in a world of I don't know where we are always expressing ourselves in social media, and then um, you know, a way to decentralize um knowledge, you know. Is it easier or harder for you to translate your own works? I have never tried to translate your own. Never try, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I imagine it'd be hard. And and you know, and and I think in the Georgia Review we published uh a piece by um Anna Kazumi Stahl, who's an Argentinian writer. She's just got this great story, but she translated her own story from English into or from Spanish into English, and I think of like you know the way Samuel Beckett translated his own works, you know. And um, I took a seminar with the great Kenyan writer Gugi uh Watiango, who um in the latter half of his life wrote his novels um in his um African language, um I'm gonna butcher it. It starts with a G. I'm not gonna try. But then he translated it himself into English, and so that's a really interesting um practice. I don't have the skill set to do that.
SPEAKER_03:So when did um becoming an editor become part of your kind of like wheelhouse? Because you went poetry, translator, and when did when did editing?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um so what happened was after I got my I don't remember it's 2009. Um I got my MFA from 2005 to 2008 at the University of Maryland, and then I stayed on two years adjuncting, teaching in the English department, the Jimenez Writer, uh Porter Writer House, and um the Asian American Studies program there. And sometime in 2008, or maybe 2009, but I think it's 2008, my dear friend uh Lawrence Menbui Davis, who was um a PhD student at that time at the University of Maryland, he's a writer too, um, he we had this like we had this temporary building in called Susquehanna, and all the grad students had their offices in what they called the bullpen, which basically looked like a trading floor, but a trading floor like stuck in the 60s. And so there were all these desks with like partitions that only went up, you know, so high, and they were all felt that orange of the 60s and 70s, you know, Donna? Yeah. Yeah. I got a visual picture of if it's right or not. And so he came into the bullpen and he came in, we were we were kind of friendly up until that time. But he had this like grin, and he had talked um the head of the Asian American studies program at that time into taking. Some of their and a PC grant, they got this big national grant. He had talked the head to take some of that grant to pay for to print um one the first issue of a literary journal, of an Asian American literary journal. And he came out and he told me this. And he's like, hey, he's like, you want to do this thing? And I was like, and to pause here, I gotta I have to admit that um I didn't know much about literary journals at that time. Um I guess my teacher, my poetry teachers can know that now. I got an MFA without really knowing it, and I was submitting to journals, not really knowing journals, you know, like I was not the best student in that sense. That's probably not that atypical though. Maybe not, but you know, no one should admit that, at least right then. Um and but I love I mean I love Lawrence and I love the guy, and just the enthusiasm and the trust. Um and then I also like I cut my teeth in the indie music scene in Austin. I was never a musician, but like what I did with my life was like I played sports and I went to shows, you know, and so I thought it was just like oh putting together a music zine, which is not terribly off the mark, but it it is not completely the bullseye. So I was like, oh, we're gonna put together a zine, you know. My buddy here wants, you know, trust me, and is really excited about it. And so I was like, I was like, yeah, I mean, I was like, I love I love this guy. Um, yes. And so we just did it without really knowing much. And it was just like kind of say yes first, learn on the go. And the thing is called the Asian American Literary Review. We just kept on making the next one when we could. And that thing is still alive, kind of. I mean, it's still an org that, you know, um will likely publish a next journal. But we ran that for I mean, I was I was heavily in it until um I got the job at the Georgia Review, you know. A at least until my dissertation at least until I dissertated, you know. But that was always just like a side hustle or like a like a passion project and all that. And so I had always been doing that, you know, on that scale. Um But that made you wanted to that made you interested in of the Georgia Review. Yeah, I mean I don't want to come off as like someone that's bumbling and all that. And I I really do a lot of stuff, but I guess one of the the lessons I've learned in my life is just to like value your friends and keep your friends around you because coming to this job started with a little bit of just like my bumbling. But you know, like so when I so I I I went in 2010 to get uh academic PhD at the University of California, Irvine. And um, and I got my degree in 2018, and when this job became live, I had been a year and a half into the process of applying for academic jobs, like kind of consummate academic jobs, that the tenure track professor of British romantic literature, the ten, you know. And one of the things that happens, it's a product of just like spending so many years specializing, is you get really blinkered and you get really fixated and you want to just get more and more specific. And there are just a whole other things that I don't have to go into right now. But I was blinkered to getting that kind of tenure track job. And my dear friend, um Julie um Enzer, you should give her credit when credit is it. Um she put the job um ad in front of me, and I was just like, she's like, this is a job that you might want. I think she's like, you'd be pretty good candidate for this job. And I was just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is not for me. I'm gonna be a professor. This is the only thing I can do. And and she like shook me and slapped some sense into me, and and she's like, I think you should pause and think about it. And she helped me just pause, and then she like kind of we talked through the stages a little bit and and like and and so something that like I made a rash decision about was was corrected because of friends, and and so and then when I paused and looked at it, I was like, Oh yeah, this would be a great job. And then I just took took time to dream myself into that job, you know, at every stage of the way and learn more about the job and learn more about that, and then also reassessing what I'd done, you know, and reassessing um the potential the potential lives that I could have because I put all my eggs in one basket, so to speak. And so um it all kind of happened, yeah. It's all this weird recursive thing, right? I just I'd done the journal because I love it. It made sense as a career kind of trajectory post hoc, you know. Um but it worked out, and so I and and I love my job, you know.
SPEAKER_03:Did you love teaching? Because you admit you had some teaching experiences before.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I do love teaching. I loved it. I I love it now. I think um You still teach now? I I don't have to teach. My job does not have any teaching responsibilities, and I'm thankful to the University of Georgia for making this job that way. Um and I think the Georgia Review can only accomplish what we aim to accomplish with all my bandwidth dedicated to it. Um I um the English Department has been very nice in offering me the possibility to teach. Um I took them up on it once and I was just like, it doesn't really fit my bandwidth right now. I might I'm probably gonna be teaching later. Um, another plug for any undergraduates who might be listening to this thing, but the English Department and the Georgia Review and UJ Press are starting an undergraduate certificate in publishing. Oh, interesting. And so um with that kind of added contribution to the campus, you know, my teaching is not just teaching a class, it's like, you know, building out a program. Um I'll probably be teaching a little bit more, but I love I do love the act of like sharing knowledge in terms of a two-way street, communicating, um, creating a space where we where we can unabashedly think through preconceived notions, build out new, newly conceived notions, um, to feel that um to think is a substantial act is is is great. Um some of that I can do in a journal too, but it I can't do all of that in a classroom.
SPEAKER_03:Um they complement each other in some ways, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:They're there are different, you know, like communication, conversation, exchange. Yeah. Um yeah, they're they're definitely different audiences, you know, um, and and and therefore different possibilities.
SPEAKER_03:What do you kind of see as your main role as the editor of the Georgia Review? Um What did your kind of like how much of the like you know, is there is a poetry, a fiction, how much of that are you looking through picking things that done by other people? What's kind of a dynamic? Um my own curiosity because I'm not sure.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think you know, so like yeah, I the that question I can um attend to in various different ways, right? Um you know, actually you you kind of I back I can back into something that I would not have thought about previously. But that idea of like kind of um creating a space for exchange um where people can kind of be unabashedly kind of you know um um be unabashed about you know taking an ex you know thought and expression seriously, I think is really, you know, nice. So all that stuff I said about classroom that that could be I think part of it. Um and you know, my my first essay, my first TOR to our reader for my first issue, um I kinda I said, you know, one of the things that's interesting about literary journal is that it's a really unique vehicle to make community on and off the page. So um what does that mean? That means um when you're creating a community on a page, I think there's a delicious um Hermeticism with reading. So one of the things about reading, most types of literature, I I do have to bracket off things that I value very much, like comics and all that stuff, but but literature, but the a certain definition of literature is unique in the sense that um um everything that is part of the imaginative um experience, none of the things that are of the imaginate from of the imaginative experience come from the senses, right? So like if you're a fan of like Harry Potter or whatever, you know, like none of Hogwarts comes in through the five senses, right? It's a pure whereas like you know, visual art, I mean you just it's it's easy, right? Visual art, food, I consider food a higher art, music, you know, those all have one sensory input. And then the but um and so I I do think that there's like that hermeticism of like falling in love with a book, I think is a product of that, right? It's like it does feel like um sheer transport. So the British romantics that I studied, they call it transport, but it it is it is as much of an out-of-body experience as you can have, actually, you know, I think by definition.
SPEAKER_03:And I guess readers can bring more to that than they can other things. For instance, every everyone sees, you know, if you watch Harry Potter movie, everybody sees the same Harry Potter, but if you read the books, he looks different. Yeah, talks different to every each person.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, that's true. Yeah, and I think that like um I I am being a little bit of a literature chauvinist here, and I don't I don't need to be, but maybe but let's let's go with it. But I do think that like the mode of engagement of literature when you're really into it is much more intimate and much more there's a lot more agency in the in the in the reader's kind of um re uh engagement with um the scene than than any other art, I would say, right? Um you're right, absolutely. Um But that uh so I think the one of the weird ramifications of that is like when when literary folks get together as literary folks, it's really odd. Because it's like a really antisocial act. And I love those spaces. I'm all into the oddness and the weirdness, but they're just like, you know, you go to like we've all been in our basements for the last 10 years and we've got to be.
SPEAKER_03:We've all been in our spaces, right?
SPEAKER_01:And then, like, how do you like you know when you go to AWP or all that stuff? And so like I think you should go to all these spaces. Like, you know, I was talking to an author who went to word of mouth open mic um as a high schooler, and you know, his high school teacher, I should shout out to that person, but I don't know that person's name, was uh like his AP high school teacher is like, do three things that you've never done before in your life. And this writer from Atlanta, um Jay Morris, went to word of mouth and he couldn't stop writing poetry. And so, like, you know, and so um, so there's a type of community that can build on the page that's really weird because it's all because of that hermeticism. And uh journals can do that because we're iterative, we publish number after number, we're directed because you subscribe to one thing, you know, and we're collective. Um, but journals can also do events kind of in like these in in in real person events, you know, and and speak more to a local level. Yeah, and I we love doing that. Um come to all the Georgia Review events, they're free and open to the public. We do this because we love, you know, the Athens area, we love Ocone County too. Uh so everyone cross across the county line and come, and and all the other counties, you know, and and um, and so um I think that's that, you know, it's like I am a steward of what does it mean to create a communal space on and off the page, you know, and the on the page can circulate nationally and internationally and so it's off kind of a different community, yeah. But off the page is um hyper local because we want just folks to come and visit us, and we're here to like, you know, we collaborate with local institutions, our April event um with Tarfea Fazula and Jamel Brinkley. We're um collaborating with um the Athens Public Library, we're collaborating with the new bookstore, Rec Room Books, we're collaborating with AFAM, you know, and so um where can people we'll just plug real quick.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, where can people like find information, kind of keep up to date with everything that's going on with the Georgia Review? Local, local, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, I mean you could follow us on Instagram. Um I actually don't know the handle because I don't have Instagram, but Arya's awesome at that. Um you can sign up for our newsletter also, and um we have a website um www.theorgia review.com. Yeah. Easy enough. Yeah. Um, but yeah, um, so I think it's like steward like stewarding um those spaces. In the office, um, I'm lucky to have a huge office. Um and most of my job is to just make sure the office thrives in terms of just like how people work with each other and all that. And we do everything by committee. I mean just about everything by committee. Um and it's just a sheer pleasure to come in every morning to know that I'm gonna talk to all these people about literature, dream hard, um, attend to you know, make decisions and problems when they need attending too. But I always know I have people to kind of to have my back to think through kind of problems or dreams and and so it's it's pretty it's pretty dynamic and it's pretty day-to-day, but the continent is like I'm gonna work through things with people. You know, I I love my team there.
SPEAKER_03:What what makes a good poem versus a good short story, for instance? Because both are in the Georgia Review. Is it the same thing that you're looking for? Or is or does does the medium kind of change like what's important? Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah, yeah, that is a good thing, you know. I think um I mean we live in a genres have always been at once you know overly formal and and attested, is what I'll say. I mean, I think in terms of like industry um understanding and writer practice, it's I think it's a it's a it's an age in which uh there's a big critical mass, prominently kind of um working um hybrid genre, intra genre and such. And um there have been experimenters in the past, oops, as you know, as far as you know, the classics. You know, right? You know, and you know, Thucydides, you know, has what could be seen as a you know epic simile in his history or talent, you know, and so I think and so I think um I like to look at uh I don't know, I don't know how to answer that question on the large. Um I think one thing that I would look at look at is what kind of self-made and inherited literary readerships and literary traditions are things kind of working within, whether they're declared or not, you know. And so I think, you know, um in terms of poems, we're working within um an immediate history of lyricism, you know, and lyricisms kind of uh assumptions, you know, and and so the ways that they adhere to that, push against that, I think that's like one of those things. It's like, okay, if you're writing a poem, uh a de facto thing to consider is how it's kind of working with the lit with lyricism, you know. Lyricism is about kind of an immediacy, you know, it's about it's about an immediacy of communication, it's about um kind of assuming an intimate connection with an individual you. There is like that lyricism is about an I and a you, not about an I and a you all, you know. A short story is uh de facto is an I and a you all. It's like um and of course people push against that and in and attend to that in different ways, and I think that's that's that. I think you know, um pivoting to the other genre that we do, um there's the the great writer Alex Chi, he's a novelist and essayist. He came and read um a couple years ago. I mean, Alex is just amazing, but um he writes both, and he writes both really well. He's like well regarded in both. And someone sometime asked him, like, what's the difference between a short story and an essay? And he he does this thing. He's like, Well, you know. Like paused and and he it's it felt so plain spoken, but within the context and out of his kind of ongoing conversation and expertise, it just sounded just so profound. But he was just like, Well, with fiction, you're building out a world, and with essay with nonfiction, but you want to get it right, and he didn't care to gloss it. But but I do think that like kind of in terms of short story and fiction, it is about building out a world, you know. Um so I guess poetry takes that world for granted in a lot of ways. Takes that world for granted and focuses on a connection. And of course, poets need to build out some sort of kind of emotive milieu, but it doesn't have to build out a world in the way that um a reader of fiction expects the writer to. And if you want to disregard that expectation, then that's fine, but you need to kind of signal that, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_03:Um do you have much time or bandwidth for your own writing now that you're editor or the Georgia Review and you're I I would just imagine just immersed in kind of other people's writing all the time. Um how does that impact your own writing? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, I feel like one never has enough time. Even even the cre even the people who make even the people I know who make all their money and poetry, I know that. Yeah, no, but there are some, and they feel like there's not even enough time. And it's like one of those things where like, I don't know, and then you know, if you're in grad school and you get your kind of, you know, you get your fellowship year and all you have to do is write. You're like, oh my god, I actually got what I asked for. You know, and this is not actually, you know, and so um too much of a good thing. Yeah, I mean, in terms of like sheer hours of the day, um, there are not less hours now than when I had my dissertation also. Okay. So it's been a long time where um the poetry's been first, and I'm fine with that mostly. I mean, I I do hate that I don't spend enough time writing. Um, and it's it's it's tough, but um, but I can make time out, and I do. I um and that's fine. And I think one of the things I am thankful for having this job is that my contributions to the literary ecos the current literary ecosystem feels that that's what I get my paycheck for, and I just I love that, you know. Um I love to bring writers to their happy place, I love paying writers, um, I love kind of um just pressing on our readers that you should read this thing that you haven't read before, and and so it really is a blessing to have this job. And so um I always bemoan not writing, um, but I also have to put it within context that like I I haven't ever have an awesome job.
SPEAKER_03:And what was your impression or what is your impression of the kind of local literary scene here in this area?
SPEAKER_01:I'm you know, I'm still learning. I'm still learning quite a bit. You know, um I um James asked me previously what I knew about Athens before I came. Yeah. So the the job brought me here. I I moved here only because of the job, and all I knew was, you know, aga I uh of course REM and B52s, the university. Um I knew I you know I I know the the writers um at the university, um learn about some of them even more from you know my mentors who who know some of them. Um and uh I just want to keep on learning, you know. Um the campus resources are rich. Um and I just I just want to kind of see what's up. You know, I I ran into I met um this guy, Will Stanier, who um runs a sound studies, he runs a reading series in town called Sound Studies. And those things are like those things are like it. Those are the gifts, you know. Like I I do an organization that's institutionally supported. I feel like I do important work, but but but to be honest, those unaffiliated DIY spaces are the most important thing, I think, for literary livelihood. And so I've been going to some of those readings, and it's just like it's really rad. Um I getting to, you know, I'm in touch with Michaela Robinson, I think I might be garbling names and but um or Miss But you know, I know she does a uh poetry for the people stuff as the outgoing poet laureate, and and that's awesome. And she's gonna um moderate the the event um with Tarfia and Jamel um in April. And and it's great that the campus community is thriving, but that it's not the end all and be all, you know. And and I need to work harder to learn more about the um town part of the town and Gown Divide, and um let me know where I should be and what I should do and what I should read, you know. Um but I'm still learning.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Here's a weird question for you.
SPEAKER_03:So, you know, we you've talked about you know different communities, yeah, and you know, there's the local meeting we just talked about. How is the community in like an art creative kind of way similar and dissimilar to when you were younger and you were like on like a football team, uh-huh, you know, that kind of community that comes from being on uh uh an athletic team or a team of any kind? Yeah. Was there any we can cut this out later? I'm just curious.
SPEAKER_01:No, I know. I mean we don't I don't I don't know if we need to cut it out. I I I I don't know.
SPEAKER_03:I think um is it all the same as community community, or are they kind of unique and different? Um they're structured so different.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think that's a good question. I think so. What are the similarities? Um, at least let's just say, at least with the Georgia view, right? Sure. Um in the office, so I think about this more like so there are different ways to think about it. Like, is is the team the office? Yeah, you know, or is the team the office and the readers? You know, is is the are the sports spectators the readers? And and so depending on how you size them up, I think the analogy would be kind of different, you know. Um if the team were the office for the Georgia Review, one thing I love about my office is that everybody cares for the entity, the Georgia Review. And and it's you know, so my my sport was football, and so like some of these analogies kind of break down, but football is a team sport, you know, and it is it is a team organization where everything works together, and um we are all experts in our respective fields, but we will all roll up our sleeves and pitch in outside of our expertise just to get something done for the greater good. And I do, and so like I do value, I mean it just makes my everyday in that office just a joy. Truly, truly it is, um, to just to like work in that office where everybody believes in the Georgia Review so much. They bring the the most of their expertise, but also the most humility in their like being able to just like you know, pitch in and learn on the fly and move tables, you know, and all that stuff. And so um that's the most I can say with any sort of certainty.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, that's okay.
SPEAKER_01:There's a lot more, there are a lot more like kind of theoretical interests and all that stuff. And and there were these like sports poems that came in, and I'm just like, oh man, I just I love sports literature. Not the most comes in, you know, that fits kind of what our readers kind of in, but um, but there's there's a lot to plumb between the two.
SPEAKER_03:It is interesting that those cultures kind of like live so separately in some regards. But yeah, it is very interesting when they overlap in to me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. I mean, like when Ed Hirsch came, so Ed Hirsch is like he's this senior poet, yeah. He's the president of the Guggenheim Foundation, he's been the president of the Guggenheim Foundation forever. Um, when he wants to write a book about how to read poetry, the Library of America will publish it. You know, he's like that, that much of a public poet and well-regarded poet. And the Library of America does not have very many authors that are alive, you know, and like it's you know, and so it's it's as authoritative, you know. And Misha um introduced him and she amazing introduction. I was so nervous, but because just he's such a well-regarded person, and but she, of course, she would do a great job. But he was he was like, he, he's in the he's in his he went to Grinnell College, he's in Grinnell's kind of football hall of fame there. Oh nice, there you go. So we should ask him. And he's written, he's written about sports a little bit, but what what are you working on now?
SPEAKER_03:What are your projects that you're working on now?
SPEAKER_01:In terms of just personally. Personally, yeah, um creatively, creatively, yeah. Um I mean the the Georgia Review is a creative project. Um, so we're doing that. Um the 80th anniversary is coming up. Oh. Yeah, yeah. It's a big and so follow us.
SPEAKER_03:So there'll be a big event at some point for that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, there's a you know, there's just a lot of things happening and that could happen. And so um, yeah. Um working on some poems. Um I'm still working on a um first book manuscript. And so for those who think that I have no experience with rejection, I do. Um yeah, it's a manuscript that you know uh the oldest poems are from what 2005. So they're you know, yeah. So, you know, like that's a lot of rejection, and it's not like I'm my my writerly world is not flushed with um success. And I've had success, so I'm not trying to, you know, but but if that poem were a person, it could drink, it could vote, it could serve in the military, it could it could biologically have progeny of its own, you know. And so um so we all go through that. Um might work on the translations, um, you know.
SPEAKER_03:Is it possible you might those might make their way out into the greater world?
SPEAKER_01:Hopefully, yeah, hopefully, yeah. I've sent some queries out there with the with the book manuscript that I've had, and so um I'm being a little coy, I've been, I guess I've been actively working on it a little more than I kind of previously let on. But um, but I it's it's the ambivalence of like coming upon something that is a portrait of yourself 20 years ago. You know, it's like half envy of my youth, half cringe of like my youth. Um but I can only do it again. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So um yeah, working on a book chapter for uh an academic collection about regionalism and periodicals. I'm doing a case study of the Georgia Review. I'm interested. Did a lightning talk about with with those UK-based folks earlier this morning. Um there's there's a lot of weird kind of irons in the fire, you know.
SPEAKER_03:We always ask everybody who comes on the show what's a book or an author who's had a special impact on your life.
SPEAKER_01:On my life. Yeah, man. It happens so often. And so Or just one recently that you loved. It could be that too.
SPEAKER_03:It doesn't have to be profound. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe I'll do can I do two?
SPEAKER_03:Sure, of course.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. So um in 20, this was what, 2021, maybe? One of the things that happened, I I don't remember the years, but I came across W. E. B. Du Bois's infographics for his participation in the 1900 um, what is it, the Paris World Fair or something. You know, it won. And it was in the there's these beautiful things. And actually, I'd forgotten that I had encountered a version of that in LA. So the artist Theaster Gates did these kind of renditions of these infographics. Um, and they were mounted at at his show in LA, and I saw them and I thought they were, oh man, they're beautiful. But you know, he Theaster abstracted all the text and all that stuff, and it impacted me then. But the deeper impact was when I actually came across the original. You know, it's like when a band covers, like, you know, uh a Stooges song, and you only know the cover, and then you hear the real Stooges song, you're like, oh my god. You know what I mean? Um, and so um, and so that and and Georgia's central to that, you know, cause and so there's this amazing picture. This was in Paris in 1900, it was award-winning, where it's just like, here's the map of the black and you know, slave trade, and there's a star in Georgia, yeah. And you know, when you're talking about Walter Johnson, the black Atlantic as an emerging field, and you know, in academic study, and everybody wants the black Atlantic, you know, like Du Bois was saying that and I, you know, and so like I was just like, I have to put that in the Georgia Review. And so we did this issue that kind of focused on that, and I revisited so black folk, and with the idea of like, I want to use the Georgia Review as a way to teach me about my new surroundings, about my new kind of just you know, just to reorient me and teach me, you know, as a way to just like teach me in. And I just forgot that that was so much about Georgia, you know, and and so like my my cur my most recent read of that, which bled into his trilogy out of, you know, I'm gonna say all of Du Bois, um, his editorship of the crisis, you know. Um it also kind of he also kind of spoke to this um 19th century writer William Wells Brown, um, where my dear friend Ian Litwin taught me how to love Wells Brown. Um he has this great essay called Um My Southern Home. Um so I kind of think about those people all together, and that was that's that's been something I've thought about a lot. Like kind of reading all that stuff by virtue of the Georgia Review has been really um helpful. Uh great review of William Ellis Brown in the Georgia Review. You can access it online. You can find the the Du Bois feature online too. Um, check it out. Um, and then I think another thing that's kind of happened, so um, we have an imprint series of books. Um and that will be starting. So we had a previous iteration with UJ Press, and it was lovely and great. Um life has happened, and we're starting, we're continuing with the University of Nebraska Press. And there's a book by um a German poet that's being translated. So the German poet's Daniela Dons. The book is Portalon, the translator is Monica Cassell. It'll come out in January 2027, and it's just it is just an amazing, just an amazing book. It's it's it's very difficult, it's very high modernist, but it's extremely accessible. So there's this one poem in there. I can't even I'm not even going to it in depth because you're just gonna have to get the book and just experience it. But so she starts off and it's like she's she's writing shipping containers in the around, you know, around the um Bosphorus, and it's all about kind of a portalon is an old medieval map that looks out into the sea and not into the land. And so, like, you know, when you look at a map, most of the ocean is just like monochromatic because it's not interested in the sea. The a portal on like all the land is monochromatic because it's not interested in the land. It's actually interested in like all the in in in the waterways. And so she spent a lot of time on shipping containers, and then she starts starts to talk about global capital, tourism, the Ukraine war comes up, and she has old ancestral roots in Ukraine, so it's about the war in terms of just like, and it's just about all that stuff, you know, and it's you were talking like high octane, high modernist things, like blocks of prose, unpunctuated prose that works, that engages Holderlin, Homer, you know, pirates. It's just it's it's like kind of really people would think of it as very intellectual, but it has a really strong beating heart. It's accessible to everyone, everyone should read it. But I think one of the things that happened was there's this kind of poem towards the middle. It's just like this heartbreaking poem. It says as simply put as possible. And this book wouldn't be that without that poem, you know, and it's about an uh her getting lunch again with an elderly person who is going to die very, very soon. And they're getting a pizza. The wait they were talking to the waitress, and the waitress kind of has a meltdown, you know, because of something happening in her personal life that they just get the tiniest little whim about. And this old woman was just like, It's okay, honey. This person is about to die, you know. It's like it's okay. And she's just like, I don't know, I don't know. The idea of like sympathy and solace and literature and that thing, in a book that's so high on its pyrotechnics and its global discourse, it just like it broke my heart to read it. I still just like thinking about now. I'm just like, I am I I admit I'm tearing up a little bit.
SPEAKER_03:Um that's a great pitch. If you don't want to read it now, I don't know what's wrong with you.
SPEAKER_01:No, yeah, well, and like you know, I'm I'm crying just counting it. Yeah. Um that's coming out next year. In January 2027. January 27. But yeah, I mean like the person who's invested in global capital, warfare, decolonial, da da da on such a high tenor. She's writing the same, you know, that it's the same kind of heart writing those different poems. And I just think like it's like it's that literary connection, you know, that um that that can take a million different guises. Right? It it need not be just that straightforward poem that I can do that too, you know. Although that's it just I think packs a punch.
SPEAKER_03:Um thank you so much for coming today. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Thanks for having me. Yeah. And you obviously have I love for the Georgia Review and the staff there and that's yeah. Um go subscribe, people.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and and like and come to the local events as well. Yeah, come to the local events. And like, you know, I don't know what people's financial situations are. Um and and we try to keep costs as low as possible, but you know, but at the very least, you know, if if you can make it to an event and come and hear about the Georgia Review, not only from me, but also from our folks, you know, because um everybody in the office has different takes on the Georgia Review and and they're all really lovely. So awesome. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you, James.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that was fun.